10 The Edible City Katrin Bohn and Andre Viljoen

ISSN: 1755-068
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vol.4 (1)
149
The Edible City: Envisioning the Continuous
Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL)
Katrin Bohn and Andr Viljoen
Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL) proposes a coherent
strategy for the introduction of interlinked productive landscapes into
cities thereby creating a new sustainable urban infrastructure and
supporting a re-defnition of open urban space usages.
The paper focuses on the environmental benefts of integrating urban
agriculture into CPULs as one of their major spatial and occupational
components. Making reference to recent high-profle international
exhibitions and publications, the paper also traces urban agricultures
remarkable shift from a fringe interest to one at the centre of
contemporary urban and architectural discourse.
The paper concludes that, while urban agriculture is receiving a great deal
of attention, the theory underpinning the design of productive landscapes
and the rationale for developing policy to support its practice will require
sophisticated cross-disciplinary work to articulate the full potential of
concepts, such as CPUL, to make essential infrastructure within future
sustainable cities.
The CPUL City concept
The concept of CPUL City provides a strategic and associative framework
for the theoretical and practical exploration of productive landscapes
within contemporary urban design. It describes the vision for a sustainable
urban future based on the planned physical and societal introduction of
continuous productive urban landscape (CPUL) into existing or emerging
cities.
Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL) is a design concept
advocating the coherent introduction of interlinked productive landscapes
into cities as an essential element of sustainable urban infrastructure.
Central to the CPUL concept is the creation of multi-functional open
urban space networks that complement and support the built environment
(Fig.1)
Fig.1 The CPUL concept. Green corridors provide a continuous network
of productive open space containing footpaths and cycle ways. Fields
for urban agriculture and other outdoor work and leisure activities are
located within the network and serve adjacent built-up areas.
Image: Bohn&Viljoen Architects, 2002.
Key features of CPUL space include urban agriculture, outdoor spaces for
people (leisure and commercial), natural habitats, ecological corridors and
circulation routes for non-vehicular traffc. Its network connects existing
open urban spaces, maintaining and, in some cases, modifying their
current uses (Fig.2). Within the CPUL concept, urban agriculture refers
in the main to fruit and vegetable production, as this provides the highest
yields per square metre urban ground. Typical urban agriculture practice
range from small-scale food gardening to high-yield, space-effcient
market gardening.
150
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The Edible City Katrin Bohn and Andr Viljoen
151
vol.4 (1)
Fig.2 Imagine a CPUL as an open urban space where intensive urban
agriculture and convivial outdoor places for residents compliment each
other and are designed and built into a coherent infrastructural landscape.
Images: (bottom) Bohn&Viljoen Architects "Cuba: Laboratory for urban
agriculture", 2002, (top) Bohn&Viljoen Architects "The Continuous Picnic",
2008.
CPUL impacts on the city qualitatively with respect to citizens' experience
and quantifably with respect to reduced negative environmental impact.
1

The concept recognises that each site and city will present a unique set of
conditions and competing pressures informing the fnal shape and extent
of the CPUL (Fig.3). CPUL City visualises how this productive landscape
could enhance a city's social, environmental and economic performance
by questioning issues as diverse as urban lifestyles, air quality and
agricultural yield.
1
Viljoen, A. and Bohn, K, Continuous
Productive Urban Landscapes:
urban agriculture as an essential
infrastructure, The Urban Agriculture
Magazine, 15 (2005): 34-36
The Edible City Katrin Bohn and Andr Viljoen The Edible City Katrin Bohn and Andr Viljoen
152
Fig.3: London LeisurEscape. A CPUL proposal connecting public art
gallery, the Tate Modern, in central London to the town of East Croydon
at the edge of London. The image shows how parts of parks may be given
over to productive landscapes including urban agriculture and selected
roads be greened without compromising other uses.
The CPUL concept grew out of design research exploring the role of
urban agriculture within urban design and was frst designed for and then
defned by Bohn&Viljoen Architects respectively in 1998 and in 2005.
2

At the beginning of this work, we made connections between three ideas
emerging internationally during the 1990s, all supporting the need
for detailed design research into productive landscapes. One was the
design debate focusing on infrastructure, exemplifed by the notion of
infrastructural urbanism,
3
the second was an interest in reducing the
environmental impact of architecture, infuenced by ecological footprint
research,
4
and the third was the revived discussion about public open
space which confrmed urban landscape as major contextual and lifestyle
component for the design of a sustainable contemporary city.
5

Our conclusion to this research was that urban agriculture could indeed
make a signifcant contribution to fruit and vegetable requirements, and
that a case could be made for considering it as an essential element of
sustainable infrastructure in existing and developing cities.
6

2
Andr Viljoen (ed.), Continuous
Productive Urban Landscapes
CPULs: designing urban agriculture
for sustainable cities. (Architectural
Press: Oxford, 2005)
3
Allen, S. Infrastructural Urbanism,
Performance Notations: Barcelona
ZAL, Scroope 9, (1996): 71-9
4
Mathis Wackernagel, and William Rees,
Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing
Human Impact on the Earth, (Canada:
New Society Publishers, 1996).
5
Makoto Yokohari, Process
Architecture 127: Ecological
Landscape Planning, (Tokyo, Japan:
Process Architecture Co, 1995).
6
Michael Chisholm, Rural
Settlement and Land Use,
(London:Hutchinson & Co; 1972).
Andr Viljoen, and Katrin Bohn, Urban
Intensifcation and the Integration of
Productive Landscape. In Proceedings of
the World Renewable Energy Congress VI,
Part 1, (Oxford: Pergamon Press; 2000)
Department for the environment farming
and rural affairs (DEFRA) (UK). The
Validity of Food Miles as an Indicator
of Sustainable Development, Final
Report for DEFRA, ED 56254, Issue
7, (Oxford: AEA Technology; 2005)
vol.4 (1)
153
vol.4 (1)
This resulted in the CPUL City concept being underpinned by a number
of robust and interrelated social, environmental, economic and design
arguments, for what would amount to a radical change in the confguration
and programming of open urban space within an overarching desire to fnd
more self-sustaining ways of living.
7
(Fig.4, Fig.5).
Fig.4: The Pragmatic and the Visionary: a (UK-centred) dialogue on our
society's relation to food and the city.
Image: Bohn&Viljoen Architects, 2008
Fig.5: London LeisurEscape. Munton Road, London, before and after
implementing a CPUL. In this proposal, the road, which is lightly used by
vehicles, would be converted into an urban agricultural feld surrounded
by cycle and pedestrian ways.
7
Andr Viljoen, and Katrin Bohn, Urban
Intensifcation and the Integration of
Productive Landscape. In Proceedings of
the World Renewable Energy Congress VI,
Part 1, (Oxford: Pergamon Press; 2000)
Department for the environment farming
and rural affairs (DEFRA) (UK). The
Validity of Food Miles as an Indicator
of Sustainable Development, Final
Report for DEFRA, ED 56254, Issue
7, (Oxford: AEA Technology; 2005)

154
The environmental case for Productive Urban
Landscapes
There are three primary environmental benefts from organic urban
agriculture for the urban food system: preserving bio-diversity; closing
material/waste cycles and reducing the amount of energy used to produce
and distribute food.
One of the most effective ways of assessing the environmental impact
of a particular process or product is to fnd out how much embodied
energy (the total amount of non-renewable energy used in production) is
required. Embodied energy can be thought of as shorthand for assessing
the climate change potential of a process. The energy (mainly non-
renewable) currently used for conventional industrialised food production
in Europe, for example, exceeds by far the energy received in return
from consuming the produced food. This unlimited, daily energy usage
contributes signifcantly to global resource depletion and global warming.
Apart from its conventional production, food is being transported further
than ever before, often by air between countries on opposite sides of the
world, whilst local crop varieties are replaced by a few commercial types
popular with supermarkets.
8
This pattern of growing 'food miles' is far
from sustainable, its by-product being increasing air pollution, notably
of major greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, increasing road
congestion and noise and increasing stress.
One might argue that concentrating on the energy consumed by current
remote food production does not allow for the future development of
environmentally clean energy technologies. But such a position fails to
recognise that the inequitable distribution and consumption of resources
extends beyond energy usage, i.e. to raw materials, desirable land, water
and food. Reducing the energy requirements of goods and processes
shrinks the divide between those who have access to abundant energy
supplies and those who do not, without limiting the availability of fnal
products.
Productive Urban Landscapes containing urban agriculture and
supplying local outlets with the produce would offer an alternative to
this environmentally dangerous situation. Our studies have shown that
a city like London could produce about 30% of all fruit and vegetable
requirements of its population from within the city boundary. It could
achieve this by only using currently abandoned, leftover space.
8
Cook, H and Rogers, A Community
Food Security, Pesticide
Campaigner, 6 (3) (1996): 7-11
vol.4 (1)
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vol.4 (1)
However, issues related to food security and food supply and the potential
ways of improving our current modi operandi, are still only just starting to
be discussed internationally:
Food is a sustaining and enduring necessity. Yet among the
basic essentials for life air, water, shelter, and food only food
has been absent over the years as a focus of serious professional
planning interest.
9

Designing for Urban Agriculture
In urban agriculture, a solid body of literature exists describing it
in relation to food security, to development policy and the positive
social impact of urban agriculture in places with high indices of social
deprivation.
10
Mostly, this research originates in developing countries
and/or uses cases studies situated there. In Western Europe and North
America, urban agriculture is looked at in different organisational forms,
which include for example urban farms, community gardens or allotments.
Whilst the latter concentrates on the social impact of food producing
spaces on contemporary cities, the former also explores yields and growing
techniques.
Other areas of academic research relevant to Productive Urban Landscapes
are just starting to appear, for example research assessing the impact of
green and/or productive space in the urban environment with respect to
human well-being,
11
research relevant to the economic viability of urban
agriculture
12
or detailed contemporary studies into the embodied energy
and associated greenhouse gas emissions of foodstuffs.
13

However, within design disciplines, the dissemination of new ideas,
especially spatial ideas, takes place as much through visual media such
as exhibitions, as through the publication of academic papers.
14
In these
disciplines, a rapid increase in interest, exploration and dissemination
of ideas about designing urban space for productive landscapes / urban
agriculture is evident (Fig.6).

9
American Planning Association. Policy
Guide on Community and Regional
Food Planning, (2007) at http://www.
planning.org/policyguides/food.html.
10
Egziabher, A., Lee-Smith, D., Maxwell,
D., Mernon, P., Mougeot, L. and
Sawio, C. Cities Feeding People: An
Examination of Urban Agriculture
in East Africa, (Ottawa: International
Development Research Centre; 1994)
Mustafa Koc, Rod Macrae, Luc Mougeot,
and Jennifer Welsh (eds.) For Hunger-
proof Cities Sustainable Urban Food
Systems,(Toronto: International
Development Research Centre; 1999)

Maria Caridad Cruz and Roberto Snchez
Medina, Agriculture in the City: A key to
Sustainability in Havana, Cuba, (Kingston,
Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers; 2003)
Luc Mougeot, Agropolis: The Social,
Political and Environmental Dimensions
of Urban Agriculture, (London: Earthscan
and the International Development
Research Centre (IDRC); 2005)

Veenhuizen, R. van (ed.) Cities
Farming for the Future: Urban
Agriculture for Green and Productive
Cities, (Philippines: International
Institute of Rural Reconstruction and
ETC Urban Agriculture; 2006)

American Planning Association. Policy
Guide on Community and Regional
Food Planning, (2007) at http://www.
planning.org/policyguides/food.html.
11
The Second International Conference
on Urban Landscape and Horticulture
(June, Bologna, Italy, 2009).
156
12
New Economics Foundation.
2001, nef surveys at http://www.
neweconomics.org/gen/m6_i121_
news.aspx [accessed 21/11/07].
13
Brook Lyndhurst. 2008. Londons Food
Sector: Greenhouse Gas Emissions,
Report for the Greater London Authority.
See http://www.brooklyndhurst.co.uk/
londons-food-sector-greenhouse-
gas-emissions-_118?path=,118
European Commission. Environmental
Impact of Products (EIPRO): Analysis
of the life cycle environmental impacts
related to the fnal consumption of the
EU 25, (2006) at http://ec.europa.eu/
environment/ipp/pdf/eipro_report.pdf.
14
Jac Smit, Annu Ratta and Joe Nasr,
Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs
and Sustainable Cities, (New York:
UNDP, Habitat II Series; 1996)
15
Andr Viljoen (ed.) Continuous
Productive Urban Landscapes
CPULs: Designing Urban
Agriculture for Sustainable Cities.
(Architectural Press: Oxford, 2005)
16
BLDGBLOG: (2009) http://
bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/
london-yields-harvested.html
[accessed 22nd June 2009].
17
Greater London Authority: (2010). http://
www.london.gov.uk/who-runs-london/
the-london-assembly/publications/
housing-planning/cultivating-capital-
food-growing-and-planning-system-
london [accessed 27th May 2010].
18
Mark Redwood, Agriculture in Urban
Planning: Generating Livelihoods
and Food, (London: Earthscan and
the International Development
Research Centre (IDRC); 2009).
vol.4 (1)
Fig.6: The increasing number of exhibitions about urban agriculture and
CPUL hosted by arts and architecture institutions and galleries indicates
how these subjects are entering the international architectural and urban
design discourse. [The chart is not exhaustive, but refects trends evident
to the authors in their practice.]
The publication in 1996 of the book Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and
Sustainable Cities
15
was a landmark in defning an international role
for urban agriculture and may be considered seminal to a sequence of
publications, academic and popular. While planning for urban agriculture
has already been on the agenda, the publication in 2005 of CPULs
16
was
the frst time a book was devoted to presenting a design strategy for the
coherent integration of urban agriculture into cities.
17

A further milestone in the exploration of design consequences and
possibilities arising from urban agriculture was reached in 2007, when the
Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) Maastricht curated an exhibition
titled Die Eedbare Stad / The Edible City". For the frst time, this brought
together an international group of leading architects and artists all
exploring urban agriculture within their work. Since then, the number
of similar exhibitions and public works hosted by leading international
design institutions has continued to increase
18
(Fig.7) (Fig.8).
157
vol.4 (1)
Fig.7: Middlesbrough CPUL. Opportunity Map developed as part of the
UK Design Councils Designs of the Time (DOTT07) a 2-year-long urban
farming project. During 2007, the population of Middlesbrough, the local
authority and community organisations participated in urban agriculture
projects across the town. Bohn&Viljoens proposal for a Middlesbrough
CPUL shows the identifed network of open spaces and indicates DOTT07
urban farming sites (small square raised elements).
Fig.8: The Urban Agriculture Curtain. A working prototype for a vertical
productive urban landscape as part of the exhibition London Yields.
The system developed with Hadlow College utilizes industry standard
hydroponics components and produces fortnightly crops for use in the
Building Centre's restaurant.
158
In the UK, these activities are likely responsible for productive landscapes
beginning to be integrated into planning policy. Evidence for this can be
found in the Greater London Authority's / Design for Londons proposals
for the Green Grid, a network of open spaces within the city including
provision for productive landscapes
19
and the recently published London
Assembly report Cultivating the Capital: Food growing and the planning
system in London.
20
Notwithstanding these developments, the publication, Agriculture in
Urban Planning
21
concludes that architects and planners require further
awareness of and sensitivity to green and agricultural features into the
design process.
The behaviour change potential of urban agriculture
Our own research suggests that this shift in perception is equally necessary
for local residents, even in those urban areas where urban agriculture is
not only present, but also essential for people's survival
22
(Fig.9).
Fig.9: Finding Parque Lenin. In 2006, Bohn&Viljoen carried out a survey
about the perception of urban agriculture amongst local residents in
Havana concluding that people do not see productive landscapes as
equivalent to more established forms of urban landscapes.
However, at another scale, that of the individual non-commercial grower,
evidence is emerging for a behaviour change related to food growing.
In the UK, the allotment has shown itself to be a catalyst for changes
related to diet and health. Surveys undertaken within Cambridge and
Middlesbrough reveal the allotments continuing infuence across all socio-
economic ranges. Most notable are a substantial increase in the quality
19
Andr Viljoen, Katrin Bohn, Mikey
Tomkins and G. Denny, 'Places For
People, Places For Plants' keynote
paper presented at the Second
International Conference on Landscape
and Urban Horticulture (June,
University of Bologna, Italy, 2009).
20
Johann H von Thnen, J Der isolirte Staat
in Beziehung auf Landwirthschaft und
Nationalkonomie, (Hamburg, 1826).
21
Mark Redwood, Agriculture in Urban
Planning: Generating Livelihoods
and Food, (London: Earthscan and
the International Development
Research Centre (IDRC); 2009).
22
Andr Viljoen and Katrin Bohn,
CPUL: Essential Infrastructure and
Edible Ornament in: Designing Edible
Landscapes Open House International
34(2). Urban International Press (2009).
vol.4 (1)
159
vol.4 (1)
and quantity of food being consumed by allotment gardeners during
the growing-season, and decreased dependency on grocery stores as a
source for fresh produce: 70% in growing-seasons and 24% during the
off-season. Changes in food-miles reduced personal carbon emissions by
an average of 950 kg CO2/year, even while still predominantly utilizing
grocery stores during off-season months and maintaining an overall
dependence on fossil fuelled transport year round. Allotment tenants also
surpass the recommended 30 minutes/day of daily activity, through time
spent within the allotment itself and through active-commuting related
to food procurement. Furthermore allotment holders, who ate less than
the recommended daily intake of fruit and vegetables before they had an
allotment, increased their fruit and vegetable intake once they started
growing food, and this increase was refected in an increased proportion of
fruit and vegetables purchased thought the year.
23

Fig.10: The Urban Food System. Food impacts on more than our personal
well being and enjoyment. If we look at it from a sustainable and spatial
perspective, we begin to understand the complex nature of its importance
for the urban.
If this trend is validated in further research, it will indicate the signifcant
behaviour change impact that may be attributed to even relatively modest
urban agriculture interventions.
23
Andr Viljoen, Katrin Bohn, Mikey
Tomkins and G. Denny, 'Places For
People, Places For Plants' keynote
paper presented at the Second
International Conference on Landscape
and Urban Horticulture (June,
University of Bologna, Italy, 2009)
160
vol.4 (1)
24
Envisioning the future city (Conclusion)
As cities across the world seek policy guidance and further evidence on
the impact of urban agriculture, it is worth noting how rapidly this subject
moved from a fringe interest into the centre of public attention. While a
long established literature documents and advocates urban agriculture in
developing countries, the rapid shift of interest in urban agriculture that
has taken place in North America, Europe and Australasia, is remarkable.
It appears that urban agriculture could be the term and the vision that
holds together many different activities carried out for a variety of
reasons in a variety of places by different groups of farming activists. The
organisational or spatial details of these activities refect their national
and local context, but include dedicated urban food growing projects as
much as allotments, transition town growing schemes, community gardens
or urban farms. In Germany and Britain, for example,,Schrebergrten
and allotments share similarities as well as Gemeinschaftsgrten
and community gardens. Germany adds the Interkulturelle Grten /
intercultural garden movement to the richness of food growing projects
(Berlin, Gttingen) and Britain is home to the frst food growing towns
(Todmorden, Middlesbrough). Both countries comprise cities where also
larger scale urban farming initiatives are happening because of availability
of space and strong stakeholder support (Brighton, Berlin). Across all
populations and professions, ideas have taken hold to both, improve on the
current urban food system and to use open urban space more productively.
Consequently, we are now talking about something more strategic and
infrastructural. Now, the question is how a signifcant amount of urban
agriculture can be re/integrated into cities. The term re-integration is
important here, as cities have included productive spaces in the past,
and the economic and agricultural logic for locating fruit and vegetable
growing close to the city centre was clearly argued as long ago as the early
19th century in Von Thnen's writing.
24
Whilst historic models should not
be romanticised, and by some accounts they were not particularly pleasant
places, they do present examples of closed-loop, no-waste and energy
effcient systems. Our task now is to rethink and redesign better spaces for
urban food systems.
A strong environmental case can be made for the productive landscape as
an essential element of sustainable urban infrastructure. Concepts like
Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL) and CPUL City provide
design strategies capable of giving spatial and organisational coherence to
the infrastructural and qualitative aspects of urban agriculture.
To translate this concept into practice will require further cross-
disciplinary work. The design, planning, landscape, horticultural and
retail professions will need to relearn old skills and develop new ones
161
vol.4 (1)
to support, in particular, the practice of urban agriculture. If urban
agriculture is to be widely adopted, its other functions and benefts such as
providing social cohesion or urban ornament also require articulation (Fig.
10). The complexity of the urban food system is both a challenge and an
opportunity at the same time.

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